The Roman Empire By: ELENA, PEDRO, LOURDES Y MARCOS
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Index 1. Roman empire 2. Roman society 2.1 Patricians 2.2 Plebeians 2.3 Slaves 3. Daily life. 3.1 House 3.2 Food 3.3 Clothes 4. Conclusion.
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Roman Empire. Two thousand years ago, the world was ruled by Rome. From England to Africa and from Syria to Spain, one in every four people on earth lived and died under Roman law.
Roman society The Patrician: The Patrician Class is Rome's elite aristocracy, the powerful Founding Families of Rome. They would often have a house in the city and a villa in the country that was run by slaves. Children in a patrician home had their own bedrooms and plenty of toys. They had personal slaves to carry books to school, to wrestle with, and to meet the child's needs. Mothers and daughters would have slaves to help them with their hair. The popular hairstyle could take hours to develop. Slaves in patrician households rarely had their own bedrooms. They often had to find a place to sleep, or had a spot in the basement.
The plebeians: Plebeians: The plebeians were the lower class. Nicknamed "plebs", the plebeians included everyone in ancient Rome (except for the nobility, the patricians) from well to do tradesmen all the way down to the very poor. Many plebeians lived in apartment houses called flats. Some of the apartments were above or behind their shops. Even fairly well to do tradesmen might chose to live in an apartmentbuilding compound over their store, with perhaps renters on the upper stories. Their own apartments might be quite roomy, sanitary and
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pleasant, occasionally with running water. But others were not that nice. The plebeians were the merchants, farmers and artisans of Rome. In 491BC, the Romans were at war, but the common people refused to fight for their city, and would only do if they had right to elect their leaders.
The slaves: Some Roman people were owned by other people, or by the Roman government, as slaves. Because the Romans didn't really have hourly wage work, or salaried work, as we do now, men and women who didn't own their own land and didn't own businesses of their own often found themselves enslaved. The jobs slaves did were jobs which today in the United States are done by free people working for wages. Like today, some of these jobs were awful, and some of them were pretty good Many of these men and women, especially in southern France and Spain, worked in the fields, on big farms owned by rich men and women. On these farms a slave or freedman overseer forced hundreds or thousands of slaves to work out in the fields all day under the sun, and at night the slaves sometimes slept in barracks, with the men separated from the women. Not so many people work in farming today, but those that do are often very poor, and often - if they are migrant laborers, for instance sleep in barracks.
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DIALY LIFE The Food: Foods of early days An early Roman diet consisted of: Meat Wild fruits Nuts Many names derived from agriculture: onion Early staples were: grapes olives grain Fruits Early fruits were: apples pears plums quinces because they were abundant and cheap
The clothes:
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Men wore a knee-length tunic called chilton, either sleeveless or short-sleeved. Roman men wore a cloak over their tunic, which was like a wide shawl that was draped over the shoulder and carefully wrapped around the body.
The houses: Roman houses were so well built, if you were rich, that many examples of Roman houses exist throughout the Roman Empire. If you were poor in Rome, you lived in simple flats or apartments.
WEBGRAPHY: http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/roman_houses.htm http://rome.mrdonn.org/plebs.html http://www.historyforkids.org/learn/romans/people/slaves.htm http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/primaryhistory/romans/city_of_rome/ http://www.pbs.org/empires/romans/empire/index.html http://rome.mrdonn.org/plebs.html http://www.historyforkids.org/learn/romans/clothing/index.htm
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